


Trajectory

by Stonestrewn



Series: Dinner Time [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 08:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14184606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stonestrewn/pseuds/Stonestrewn
Summary: Skinner can’t read her, she can’t find her way past that smile, past the lack of guile in Dalish's pale eyes even as she lies through her teeth like it’s nothing.





	Trajectory

**9:34**

“She’s not an archer, though,” Skinner says. She takes a drink of her ale and grimaces. It’s too sour, the way they brew it here in the east. Makes her lips pucker, makes her bad mood worse. “She’s a shady asshole.” 

“Dalish seems all right to me. It’s good to have a mage on the team,” Stitches says. He’s chipper the way he always is after a fight where no one on their side came out dead or in pieces. “What a difference a fire ball makes.”

Skinner glares at Stitches and the gross admiration in his voice. “You don’t know anything about her except she’s a liar. Could be she’s bringing trouble.” 

“And we certainly wouldn’t want anyone bringing trouble.” Stitches shoots her a wry look. Skinner ignores him. 

“Says she’s an archer,” she goes on, jabbing her pointer finger into the table. “She’s not. Everyone knows she’s not, so why? Is she stupid? Think we’re stupid? Fuck her!”

“Why are you so hung up on her?”

“I’m not hung up.”

“Yet somehow we’ve been talking about her all night.”

“I’m just saying. Someone’s gotta say it.” 

“You should give her a chance.”

“Why?”

If he says because they’re both elves or because they’re both women, Skinner’s going to kill him. Doesn’t matter how many times he’s patched her up or how long they’ve known each other, how much she’ll miss him when he’s gone. She’ll crack his kindly face open with her bare hands.

“Because she’s clearly here to stay whether you like it or not, and if you keep making that face - yes, that face right there - it’s going to get stuck like that.”

Skinner might just kill him anyway.

“I know what she’s all pissed about,” Rocky says, butting in. He’s been slumped over the table with a bottle in the crook of his arm for a good half hour - Skinner thought he’d passed out. “Dalish saved her life out there today.”

“Really?” Stitches says.

“Didn’t you see? She’d’ve been skewered by that big fella with the spear if Dalish hadn’t iced him. Frozen in a flash! Real quick, that one.”

Stitches shakes his head. He gets to his feet, and Skinner scoffs.

“So what, you’re leaving now?”

“I’m going to buy Dalish a drink and thank her for saving my friend’s life,” he says. “Since you clearly won’t.”

“You leave, I win!” she shouts after him, and he shoots back: “We weren’t arguing!”

Shows what he knows. 

Rocky’s glancing at her. “You really think she’s that bad, huh?”

Skinner needs to piss. She’ll have to go outside, in the rain, find some bush to crouch in, and the ale’s too weak for her to be drunk enough not to be annoyed by that. Dalish’s laugh is high and shrill, it carries over the noise in the tavern. She hasn’t called Skinner a flat-ear once. 

Skinner shrugs. 

“I’m just saying. She’s not an archer.”

**9:41**

Dalish straddles Skinner’s waist and drops a sheet of paper on her face.

“Look!” she says, too enthusiastic for the hour. Skinner’s just woken up. She’s still in bed and she’d like to stay there for most of her long awaited day off, drift in and out of sleep until hunger, thirst or boredom draws her out of the tent. 

“Can’t see shit,” Skinner says, because that’s how it works when someone puts something over your eyes. 

“You should do it,” Dalish goes on. 

“Sure.” Skinner puts her hands on Dalish’s thighs, strokes her palms over her pants, fingers sliding along the inseam. The paper glides down the side of her face, revealing the image of Dalish on top of her bit by bit. Her shirt is loose and threadbare, nearly see-through. “Come here.”

“I don’t mean _that_ ,” Dalish says, though she spreads her legs a little wider. “This!” She picks the paper back up, reads out loud: “Archery contest! Saturday! All challengers welcome!” Her smile is beaming. “You’re an archer. Be a challenger!”

Skinner’s more of a scout, a throat-cutter, a lithe and stealthy jack of all trades able to take on whatever role the Chargers need her to play at any given moment, but archery is one of the skills at her disposal, that much is true. She’s good with a bow when she wants to be. If she wants to be. 

Skinner scoffs. “You be one.”

“I think my aiming crystal disqualifies me.”

“So fuck it.” She raises up on one elbow to tug at Dalish’s belt. “Get your pants off.” 

Dalish fiddles with the buckle, but keeps looking at the archery garbage in her hand. “I’m quite serious. I do think you should compete.”

“Why? We know who’s gonna win.”

“Oh, but she isn’t participating! It says so here. ‘Sister Leliana to judge.” The belt is finally unbuckled. Skinner begins untying the laces down the front of Dalish’s pants. “And Master Tethras won’t be there, either.”

“ _Master Tethras_ ,” Skinner mimics. Dalish keeps everyone’s titles. “Master Tethras and his pissing cheat machine.”

“Maybe he’s disqualified, too.” 

“Got nothing to do with archery. What he does.”

“You’re an archer, though.” Dalish leans forward, puts one hand on each side of Skinner’s head. The paper crinkles in her fist. Her hair falls like a curtain. “You could compete. Represent the Chargers, oh, the Chief would be so proud.”

Skinner hooks her thumbs under the waistband of Dalish’s pants, tugs them down her hips. “What about you?”

“I would love it,” Dalish says, licking her dry lips. “My strong, sure woman on the range.” She sighs, sinks lower, her tits pressing against Skinner’s chest, face flushing slowly. “I would cheer you on all the way.”

“Be loud for me,” Skinner says, and dips a finger into her cunt. 

**9:35**

She waits weeks for the right moment. 

Skinner finds it on a quiet afternoon in camp, sitting cross-legged on a crate in the supply tent, mending a tear in one of her two shirts. Boring, fiddly work. She’d trade the task to Krem in exchange for one of his watches, his needlework shows less and lasts longer, but he’s off with the Chief, doing something important. It has nothing to do with Skinner, so she hasn’t asked what. 

She’s halfway done when Dalish enters, chirping “Hello there!” before leaning her staff against a pile of sacks and bending over to rummage through the large chest housing most of Stitches’ supplies with some urgency. 

Skinner puts her sewing down in her lap. “What’s up?”

“Rocky burned himself experimenting again,” Dalish says. “It’s pretty bad this time, or so I’m told.”

“Face or hands?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Bet it’s his cock,” Skinner says, because when she’s being mean she doesn’t feel the worry.

Dalish looks at Skinner, amused. “How on earth would he have managed to burn his cock?”

“Someone told me he tried to fuck his experiments? I’d believe them.”

“A fair point,” Dalish says, “but I don’t think that is what happened this time.”

Skinner knows this is it. Dalish is in a hurry. Not paying attention, muttering a list of medical supplies to herself under her breath. She straightens with some bandages and ointments in her hands, and if she’s going to be caught off guard it’s going to be now, when she’s distracted but comfortable, when it’s just the two of them, alone. 

“Don’t forget your staff,” Skinner says. 

Dalish says: “Thank you!”

Got her. 

She’s admitted to the lie. There’s no more squirming around it, no more pretending not to pretend. She’ll be confronted with her shifty habits and they’ll be put aside once and for all. Then Skinner can put Dalish aside, get her out of her head, out of her thoughts, stop getting snagged on her like hair on a button, like a loose sleeve on a low door handle. If Dalish stops lying, if Skinner can know what she is, who she is, scrape off the irregularities until she fades into the background, she won’t have to think about her anymore. It won’t be Skinner warding herself from whatever Dalish is, everyone else shrugging off her oddities and going about their business around them. Dalish will, at last, be the one defending herself. 

Only, Dalish doesn’t look defensive. She looks defeated. 

Her ears droop. Her mouth sags. Her eyes are wide and frightened, darting around the tent. Her whole face hangs limply, her smile completely gone for the first time Skinner’s ever seen, like when you kick over a pole and the whole tent collapses.

Skinner looks down. She stabs her needle through the fabric. “Bow,” she mutters. “Whatever.”

The silence pricks down her spine. Skinner waits and waits for Dalish’s steps to disappear out of the tent, quick and escaping or hard and dismissing, but for seconds that feel too long to be just seconds, nothing happens. Finally she glances up, and Dalish is smiling again, smiling like she never stopped. 

“Thank you,” Dalish says. “For the reminder.” 

Skinner can’t read her, she can’t find her way past that smile, past the lack of guile in her pale eyes even as she lies through her teeth, like it’s nothing. 

When Dalish darts out of the tent with the supplies, she leaves her staff behind. 

**9:41**

She’s up against Harding, the dwarf with the freckles and the bouncy ass. Skinner made it through the the first qualifying round fine and into the contest proper. It’s a tournament from here on out, matches pitting one against one. They’re told it makes it more exciting, but that’s a load of crap. Everyone knows who’s going to win. With Leliana judging there’s no beating Sera, and since she’s an elf Skinner can’t even get as mad about it as she’d like to.

Her ears are twitching. Tension has crept into her spine where she’s standing on the makeshift range, the targets some 200 feet away. They’re shooting from the Skyhold gates towards the stables, and there are people watching from the stairs and from far up on the castle walls, even sitting on the roof of the barn. Skinner spits onto the dirt, shifts her feet. She’s not used to having an audience. Not like this. 

The Chargers have come out in numbers, crowding up behind her as close as they’re allowed. The Chief’s out with the Inquisitor, but every single one of her asshole friends and comrades are there to support her by being drunk as loudly as possible. Rocky takes up the chant: _“Skinner! Skin her! Skinner! Skin her!”_ and they only barely quiet down even when Leliana looks over with the beginning of a frown on her face.

Harding laughs a little, nodding at the chanting Chargers. “Ouch,” she says. “Should I be worried about this?”

She’s a good one, Harding. Reliable in the field, exact with her intel, hot in a farm girl kind of way, with her round curves and friendly quips. 

“Only if you lose,” Skinner says, anyway.

Harding goes first. The crowds don’t hush when she raises her bow - Cabot’s been hawking too much ale and harder stuff as well for that to happen - but Harding is unperturbed. She stands steady, muscles in her bare arms flexing enticingly as she nocks an arrow and draws. She scrunches her nose. Holds her breath. 

The arrow flies, sure and straight, hits the target with a thunk less than an inch from the very center. 

A cheer goes up. Harding’s well liked around the keep. She waves at the onlookers, but her smile is small and concentration still furrows her brow. Not one to take out her victory in advance. Smart as well as pretty.

Skinner spits on the ground once more and steps forward. Behind her the Chargers get louder than ever. As if that’s helping, as if having a bunch of bastards bellowing for her to ‘nail the shot’ and ‘show’em how it’s done’ is going to do anything but scatter her focus. She’d give her life for every single one of them in a heartbeat, but sometimes she wants nothing more than to butcher them all herself.

Not that it matters. She can take this shot, she knows she can. The courtyard is sheltered and the sight is clear. Skinner lifts her bow, she nocks the arrow, she draws, she aims-

A howl goes up from among the chargers, shrill and piercing, Dalish at the top of her lungs. Skinner flinches, just as she takes the shot. 

Her arrow misses the target altogether, off by a good two feet.

**9:35**

Dalish always stands a bit too close. Skinner can feel her warmth through her shirt sleeves, and when she shifts her balance their thighs brush. Dalish is taller, several inches. She’s slim and wiry and her pointy tits droop - Skinner’s looked her over when they’ve washed, of course she has, though she didn’t set out to commit Dalish’s body to memory the way she has.

“Can it come off?” she says. They have first watch together and the clearing is calm, the woods are quiet. “The crystal.”

“Oh, yes,” Dalish says, “and quite easily. Just cut these straps here, see?” 

Like that’s ever the smart thing to tell anyone about your giant glowing gem. It’s this, the way she’ll trust you with everything but the most basic details about her person, that has Skinner bristling, still. Dalish is all stupid honesty, until she’s all shitty lies. 

“What staff doesn’t matter?” she says. 

“Hm? I didn’t quite hear you there” Dalish replies airily, eyes on the treeline, pretending badly.

Skinner sighs. “ _Bow_. Does it matter about the bow? If it’s enchanted or whatever.” 

“You mean the wood itself? Not really, no.” 

“It can go on anything?”

“I suppose.” Dalish peers down at her. “Why?”

The moss is cold and wet beneath Skinner’s feet, it squelches when she shifts her weight. In the alienage, trapped in the dust between crumbling walls, she’d thought moss would be soft and smooth like a blanket, but this moss seeps between her toes. She still likes it, likes how it feels. She used to think she wouldn’t live to feel much at all.

“Your bow sucks,” she says.

Dalish runs a hand down her staff, the well worn wood. “Yes,” she agrees, neither saddened nor pleased.

“It looks bad.”

“It’s true.”

The wind whispers through the treetops. The sky is dark with clouds and the air has a dampness to it, almost chilly. The summer has been sodden, drenched, but greener than anything Skinner’s ever seen, strong and vibrant. The past few years have been dryer than usual, and now the plantlife soaks up this gift of steady rains, grows with abandon, bursting from seeds that have waited long to sprout. 

“Maybe I have a bow you can take instead,” Skinner says. “Put your crystal on it, and it might look like…” She runs a hand through her hair. She doesn’t have to do this. There’s no good reason to play along. “...I think you need a better bow.” 

Dalish is quiet for a long second. 

“Skinner,” she says, not before her silence has pulled every muscle in Skinner’s arms taut. “Are you actually nice?”

Skinner laughs. She’s been called many things in her life but no one has ever called her nice.

Dalish laughs, too, like it’s a joke they’re sharing. “Thank you,” she says, “for being nice to me.”

“I’m not being nice to you. Can’t have you looking weird and suspicious, that’s all.”

“Okay,” Dalish says, and doesn’t question the lie. A gust of wind catches her hair, whips it into her face. She turns her face to the wind, lets it brush it away for her. “It’s going to rain,” she observes out loud.

In the alienage, Skinner dreamed of gardens. Wide lawns, hedges, flower beds and fountains. She climbed the wall to a chevalier’s villa once and nurtured the moonlit image of his prized garden in her heart long afterwards, imagined herself under the pruned cherry trees.

When she first saw a forest, it scared her. She’s told no one and she never will, but it did. So much larger than she could have pictured. So much wilder. Filled with foreign smells and sounds, with none of landmarks she knew how to navigate after. It took time to get used to, to learn how to walk without stumbling over roots, how to not get bewildered when a path disappeared beneath the ferns. She likes the woods now. Maybe liked them even back when she was scared, liked them for stretching so much further than her old dreams could have ever reached. 

In the darkness Dalish’s profile is barely visible. Skinner follows the faint outline of her face with her eyes: the small nose, the thin lips, the chin jutting forward. Where their arms make contact, the warmth of her blossoms.

“It’s going to rain,” she agrees. 

**9:41**

Harding buys Skinner a drink afterwards. 

“I feel bad,” she says, watching Skinner over the table as she sweeps the mug of brandy in one gulp. “It’s not like I _really_ won over you.”

Skinner shrugs, wiping the corners of her mouth with her thumb and forefinger. “Not your fault it went how it went.”

“Sorry,” Dalish says. She’s sitting next to Harding, just a little too close. Their elbows touch, but Harding hasn’t scooted away and when Dalish catches her eye, raising a brow, Skinner nods her consent to the question implied. If Dalish is willing and Harding is down, so is she. 

“I’m an archer too, you know,” Dalish continues. She puts her hand on Harding’s bare arm, rubs her thumb in circles. 

“Oh?” Harding’s eyes flicker to Skinner, a little nervously. “I’m sorry, it’s just- You two are together, right?”

“We branch out,” Skinner says.

“Variety is the spice of life,” says Dalish. 

Harding wets her lips. A blush spreads from her cheeks over her forehead and all the way out to her ears. There’s nothing bashful about it. 

“I see.”

“You should know.” Dalish drapes her arm around Harding’s shoulders, slides as close as she can get, her tits pressing up against her arm. “Skinner is amazing in bed. I was a virgin when we met and she taught me everything I know.”

Skinner can’t help the chuckle that escapes her. 

“You’re so full of shit,” she says. To Harding: “Never met a filthier elf than Dalish. I’m thinking all the People have to do all day out in the woods is fuck, from what she’s showed me.” 

“Well, I don’t know what the truth is here,” Harding says. “But maybe… there’s a way for me to find out.”

Dalish beams. “Want to scout out our bed?” she says, and it doesn’t deserve a laugh but Harding laughs anyway, a little breathlessly. When Dalish traces a finger down her jaw and closes in for a kiss she parts her lips and meets her halfway. 

It’s slow and deep, both of them savoring each other. Harding’s small hand trails from Dalish’s shoulder down her chest, hovering over her left breast until Dalish pushes into her touch. She’s fiddling with the pins keeping Harding’s elaborately braided hair together, and every small tug wrings little throaty groans from Harding, makes her eyelashes flutter against her cheek. 

By the time they break the kiss, Skinner’s clit is throbbing. 

“Upstairs,” she says, her voice hoarse. “Attic.” 

Harding takes point, grabbing Dalish by the hand and pulling her along through the crowded tavern towards the stairway. Dalish looks back over her shoulder, locks eyes with Skinner. 

She’s smiling, like she’s never, ever stopped. 

**Author's Note:**

> I know World of Thedas says the Chargers have been a company for less than a year, but I can't imagine them becoming established in such a short time so I've taken some liberties with the timeline.


End file.
